Delivered: 6 November, 1921
First Published: Pravda No. 252, November 9, 1921; Published according to the Pravda text
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, page 117
Translated: David Skvirsky and George Hanna
Transcription\HTML Markup:
David Walters &
R. Cymbala
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
(The entire audience rises. Prolonged applause.) If we glance back over the past four years we see that in no country of the world but Russia have the proletariat won complete victory over the bourgeoisie. But if we have been successful it is only because the peasants and workers knew they were fighting for their land and their rule. The war against Denikin, Wrangel and Kolchak was the first occasion in history when the working people fought successfully against their oppressors. The second cause of our victory is that the Entente could not fling sufficient numbers of loyal troops against Russia, as the soldiers of France and the sailors of Britain did not want to go and oppress their brothers.
Four years have enabled us to perform a miracle without parallel, in that a starving, weak and half-ruined country has defeated its enemies-the mighty capitalist countries.
We have won a strong position for ourselves in the world, one without parallel and totally unforeseen. What still remains is the tremendous task of setting our national economy going. All that we have achieved goes to show that we base ourselves on the most wonderful force in the world-that of the workers and peasants. This makes us confident that we shall meet our next anniversary with victory on the labour front.
[1] The meeting, attended by 2,00 workers, was organised as an eveningof reminiscences.
Lenin spoke in his capacity of Deputy to the Moscow Soveit elected by the workers of the Prokhorov Textile Mills